


darkness will rise from the deep

by Beastrage



Series: changeling story [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Changelings, Dragon!Riku, Dragons, Game: Kingdom Hearts II, Gen, Pete may actually be helpful, Possessive Behavior, big one this time, changeling!riku
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27903934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beastrage/pseuds/Beastrage
Summary: In which Riku goes Dragon instead of Nort.Maleficent very much would like to track her lost changeling down, now that she's back from the past.
Relationships: Maleficent & Riku (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: changeling story [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043283
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28
Collections: Mama Mal and Changeling Riku





	darkness will rise from the deep

**Author's Note:**

> Those who follow my other works in KH...there is none of my usual worldbuilding/monsterbuilding that I use in here, just mostly Vanilla KH. For fun!

Well. 

Riku had imagined vaguely in the past what the consequences for giving into Darkness might be. Only knew it would be bad. 

But never...like this. 

He lifts a single five-clawed foot and wiggles it. It’s...definitely not human. Not at all.

_ What’s changed? _ Riku runs through a mental checklist, one that’s existed ever since he realized how  _ monstrous  _ he had become without realizing. A state of ignorance he’ll never allow to occur again. 

His horns remain, though now attached to a much bigger inhuman skull. His body stretches out, snakelike on four legs. Ridges and lumps along his elongated spine. 

The silver-navy scales he’s been fervently plucking from his human flesh now cover him entirely. 

...Probably be a bad idea to tear them out. 

Darkness shivers and everything is  _ so much.  _ Louder, brighter, and  _ smellier.  _

Riku examines the still body laying on the ground. Of Sora’s Nobody. Breathing, but clearly not going to wake up any time soon. 

Good. 

Riku is definitely not adjusted enough to this body to try hunting him down again in it. 

But how to move the Nobody?

He could try to pick him up with one of his front leg-limbs-whatever. But doing that...not enough balance!

Riku squawks and flaps his...wings? Oh, that’s what those lumps are! Enough to keep him upright (?) but not enough to keep balance should he try to move the Nobody in the same way.

What he needs is hands. If he can’t have his own, well, he’ll try the Heartless he used against the Nobody, as much as Riku  _ despises  _ the thought of calling it back. 

Hm. Re-summoning Ansem’s puppet Heartless is...different. Not harder, not easier, just different. Where before it had been like tearing himself in two, unleashing the Dark within...now it’s like...moving a limb he didn’t have before. Wagging his new tail. 

Yellow eyes gleam in the dark as one large hand picks up the body. Riku directs it to place said body on his back. 

Where...it promptly slides off.  _ Plop,  _ into a particularly large puddle. 

Of course. Argh.

Should he have the Guardian continue to do the heavy lifting? 

No. No, he won’t. He won’t give in. 

Riku allows the Heartless to fade away, soulless eyes boring into his own. 

Fine. Fine,  _ fine!  _ One last thing he can try, as much as he hates the idea of it. Riku’s head lowers right by the body. He gently hooks his fangs into the back of the coat, lifting the Nobody up like a cat does to a stray kitten. 

He’s an  _ animal.  _ The monster he feared he would always become, that  _ Maleficent  _ wanted him to be. 

He walks. It’s only difficult if Riku thinks about it, otherwise the limbs just appear to...sort themselves out. Sliding along the dark rainy streets, Heartless fervently avoiding him for whatever reason...

Despite everything else that’s changed...still a monster, huh? Too  _ Dark.  _

At least he can still Corridor. It almost seems too easy, reality peeling itself apart to become a door with a single concentrated thought. 

Feels sickening, carrying this very still body in his mouth. Like he’s going to eat him alive. 

_ For Sora,  _ Riku reminds himself.  _ All of this, for Sora.  _

The reminder doesn’t make the sick feeling digging through his long midsection go away. 

~

“I have to ask. Where’d the dragon come from?”

A rumbling growl. 

“Okay, no answer? Fine. Naminé, you coming with me?”

“No. I’ll stay with him.”

“Suit yourself.” The hissing of a Dark Corridor opening and closing. 

“...Good-bye Axel.”

~

Maleficent claws her path into her original time the same way she broke free of the egg. A messy sticky process that leaves those on the other side truly horrified. 

And on that other side...

Apparently she’s been presumed dead for over a year and her Castle at Hollow Bastion  _ has been taken over by the Light.  _

Oh, Pete’s here too. 

Reswearing his service to her, as useless it is. Better than nothing. Better than her having to put the fear of her into others on the Council  _ all over again,  _ because they thought she was dead. 

Maleficent paces, Diablo crooning on her shoulder. 

She needs another lair. She’s spent too long far from a place she can truly call her own, real and not  _ data.  _

But first. The boy. The boy, then the lair. She will not let her work go to  _ nothing.  _ Especially not with what she’s learned from the past...

“Diablo, you need to find my boy.”

“Wait, what?” Pete scrambles after her, as Diablo squawks his acceptance of her order and takes flight. 

“You have a  _ son?” _

~

Sora is waking up. 

Riku can’t let Sora see him like this. A monster, a  _ dragon,  _ an enemy to fight.

Inhuman. 

So he runs. The Corridors are easy enough to use like he noticed before. 

Runs and takes Naminé with him, because he won’t leave her to DiZ and she won’t leave him. 

She deserves better, than him. Always better. 

Too bad he can’t talk to her to tell her so. Just growls and hisses and snarls. Animal noises. Nothing like a language about it. 

He runs and runs, but Naminé is tired. Breathing heavily by his side. She doesn’t say anything, of course. She doesn’t need to, when he hears her breathes with his new ears and can smell her stressed exhaustion on her sweat. 

Needs to rest, but where? Not Twilight Town, DiZ might still be there. Not Hollow Bastion, it’s full of people who have no reason to welcome a monster. 

Riku shivers, his wings shaking like leaves in the wind. There is  _ one  _ place, one place no one will think of looking in. The place of his childhood. 

_ “The Secret Place,”  _ he breathes.  _ “There.” _

No one will find them there. 

~

Her bird tracks the boy easily enough. Apparently he’s been using and leaving Darkness everywhere, making a clear trail to a particularly bright World. 

A World full of Light. And of strange, bad-tasting waters. 

Diablo rests in one of the strange trees, with only leaves on the top, as he watches them walk across the unsteady sand. Her nostrils flare at the stink of salt. 

Such a strange place to be. How could anyone live here, stay here?

Yet according to Diablo...Riku is up ahead. 

Maleficent checks the air again, straining past all of the salt...

Ah. There he is. 

She can smell him in the cave ahead. 

“The boy is in the cave,” Maleficent states. 

“You didn’t tell me ya had a  _ kid, _ ” Pete’s eyes go big. Still stuck on his incorrect interpretation of why they’re here in the first place. 

Not quite right, but she’ll let his incorrect conclusion pass. There are more important matters to tend to. If she corrected him about everything, nothing would ever get done. 

“I was unaware he would continue to dig himself into holes he cannot get out of.” Leaving her unable to leave him to his own devices. Yet Riku was awfully keen on guidance before, would have sought her out. Why should she think otherwise?

Yet he’s changed from before in the year she’s been in the far off past. 

Changes that either have to be corrected or accounted for. 

“Why dontcha just become a dragon and pull him out?” Pete gesticulates in his usually useless fashion. 

Maleficent shakes her head. “The space is too small for my transformation to reach in, fool.”

That the boy fits in there is only a testament to how young he is. Barely over a tenyear. 

Throwing himself into trouble of all kinds. A  _ hero.  _

A sneer, at the thought. 

She’ll teach him better than that. 

~

Maleficent shouldn’t be here. 

She’s  _ dead.  _

A state of being that doesn’t allow for her to be making snide remarks about his lack of control, right outside his cave. 

Riku trembles. Curls up tighter.

A loud squeak comes from the middle. 

Oh no!

Right,  _ Naminé.  _

Hastily Riku unravels himself and supports himself on his front legs, looking over the Nobody anxiously. 

She’s not  _ too  _ squished, thank goodness. 

_ “Sorry, sorry,”  _ he rumbles, knowing he won’t be understood. No one has. 

“What exactly do you have in there?” Maleficent, again. Asking about  _ Naminé.  _

No.

He won’t let her. 

Riku hisses. Naminé curls in on herself in response, which she shouldn’t because Riku is hissing at  _ Maleficent,  _ not her. And he has no way to tell her that because he can’t speak!

He nudges at Naminé with his snout. She shrinks even more, please don’t. “ _ Please don’t be sad, I didn’t mean it.” _

“Pete! Go in there!”

“But Maleficent, what if he tries ta e-”

“Go. In.”

“Right!”

A large dog-person, the same kind of person as Mickey, squishes himself through the hole. Somehow. 

“Uh, Maleficent? There’s a girl in here?” he calls out, looking confused. 

“What? Move out of the way, I’m coming in.”

“Uh-”

She looks exactly as Riku remembers her, haughty and somehow making him feel small though he’s the biggest thing in the cave at the moment. Haunting him. 

Her yellow eyes look him over. Better him, than Naminé. Naminé doesn’t deserve the wrecked aftermath of Riku’s sins coming to visit. 

“You are not tending to your own health,” Maleficent says, displeased. Her fingers tap against her staff. 

Riku growls. “ _ Why would you care? I’m not helping you!” _

Somehow, she seems to understand the sentiment behind his sounds. “You do not understand how much  _ effort  _ it takes to create a fully functioning changeling that will not dissolve the minute it  _ breathes. _ ”

Yellow eyes narrow. 

“My work will not be put to  _ waste,  _ due to your current rebellion.”

_ “Always rebellion,”  _ Riku rumbles. 

“You cannot run from your nature forever, no matter what those Light-obsessed fools tell you,” Maleficent replies dismissively. Her staff taps against the ground. “Darkness has woven itself into you, down to the Heart.”

_ “That doesn’t mean I'll work for you! Not like before!”  _ Riku wants to roar, to claw the ground. To shred the witch to pieces. 

Maleficent stands unmoved. As always. 

“We’ll see.”

Then she turns to... _ Naminé.  _

“Now, who are you?”

Riku growls longer than before. A rattling sound that only means  _ back off.  _

Maleficent, of course, ignores him. The dog-person, Pete, doesn’t, gives him a wide-eyed look as he quickly hides behind his mistress. 

Naminé shivers. “Nobody important.”

Maleficent breathes in deeply, a sharp hiss of a sound. 

“That scent...did you replace your precious princess, boy? After she wouldn’t wake up?”

Naminé outright flinches. Riku does too, the motion much more exaggerated on his larger inhuman body. 

“I can’t replace her.” Naminé looks down at her hands. “I’m just her Nobody.”

“Oh, like those black-coated folks!” Pete inserts into the conversation. “But yer not wearing a black coat?” He scratches his head. 

“Enough,” Maleficent says dismissively, “I will hear their explanation of ‘Nobodies.’ More on these ‘black-coats’ later.”

“Course!” Pete nods fervently. 

During this verbal exchange, Riku takes the opportunity to claw himself forward an inch or two. Just enough to be able to slide between Naminé and Maleficent. 

_ “It’s none of your business.”  _ He snaps his jaws. 

“Why this girl smells exactly like that Princess of Heart you always worried about? Of course it is.”

Of course she would notice that.  _ Riku  _ noticed that, and his sense of smell is nowhere close to Maleficent’s ability with it. An ability that was because of...dragony stuff. 

Wait, is that why he can smell Darkness now? 

“ _ I won’t tell you anything.” _

“I will find out the reason myself, then.”

_ “No!”  _ Riku lashes out, snapping at the witch standing in front of him. 

She moves out of the way, so he’s throwing himself outside of the cave. 

Snarling, hissing, he somehow manages to turn himself towards her, as she bends over to step out after him. Her thin lips are pressed into a gloating smile.

Why is she smiling...?

Oh  _ no.  _ He’s so  _ stupid.  _

Now that Riku’s outside of that too-small space...the witch can take advantage of that. 

Maleficent’s transformation is a fiery thing, but still smoother than the last time he saw. Considering last time she was in the process of bleeding all over the ground because Ansem had attacked her...well, not surprising.

Maleficent’s dragon form is so much  _ bigger  _ than his. Which...isn’t exactly surprising, Riku remembers seeing how big she became after Ansem stabbed her. 

(With his own body.)

But it’s different when he’s gotten used to being bigger than everyone else. Towering over small, limber two-legged bodies that can fit themselves through door frames, into buildings. 

She moves. Not quickly, just in a surprising way, pinning him down with one of her front legs. 

Riku screams,  _ “Let go!” _

But she isn’t hurting him. Only keeping him from moving. Readjusting her grip whenever he squirms too much. 

It’s scary but...again, she’s not hurting him. 

Breathe, breathe. If he waits, he can find an opening. 

Riku can’t help but compare his body to hers, in that time. Searching for weaknesses, of course, why else would he be doing that? 

She’s the only other dragon he knows, after all. Real life dragon, that is. 

His proportions are longer, more snake-like. His neck seems almost merged with the rest of his body, where hers is clearly separated. His head more broad where hers narrows. 

The coloring differences are obvious, his silver and navy to her black and purple. 

Their horns are exactly alike, though. And their wings. 

Her maw opens, glowing neon yellow-green like her eyes. 

Riku trembles. 

_ Nononono. _

~

The hatchling is  _ small.  _ Very small for his age. 

The realization is so much more vivid in her other-skin, where scent and color and heat are so much stronger and  _ more.  _

Maleficent pins him for a more thorough examination. 

He squeaks, squirming. A more steady grip asserts that she will not be letting go. Not any time soon. Checks him. 

Scales thin and threatening to fall out, claws weak...his health has clearly been suffering, every mark so much clearer in her other-skin. He’s not been eating. 

His wings, paper-thin. Are they supposed to be that thin at this age, he can’t even use them for flight in that condition. 

Not that Maleficent can really fly without the usage of magic on her end. But she’s a creature of Fire, not Wind. Flight is not her vocation. Not in the way destruction is. 

Her mouth opens, tongue sliding out. She needs to cover him in her scent. 

Assure him she will not allow him to come to further harm.

“Let him go!”

Hm? Her ears buzz.

There’s a human-shaped thing on the ground. Making noises at her. 

Human- _ shaped  _ because it smells both like a human and not.  _ Nobody,  _ some part of her remembers vaguely. Called a Nobody.

Should she eat it?

No. 

The hatchling has claimed it, she won’t do that. 

Her possession is making noises at the hatchling’s possession. Trying to correct it presumably. 

“Ya shouldn’t do that, ya know! It’s dangerous!”

“But what if she hurts Riku?”

“The kid’ll be fine, he’s a dragon! You’re not!”

Hm. The hatchling has suddenly gone wild in response to the noise, throwing himself against her grip, nibbling at her claws. 

Slowly she loosens her grip, moves her head closer. 

“ _ Don’t hurt them,”  _ he hisses. 

She huffs.  _ “Of course not. They are Ours.” _

His ears twitch. “ _ Ours?” _

_ “Yes.” _

Changing is tiring. There is no fight to justify it either, just...the hatchling. 

The hatchling is probably tired. 

Like she is. 

She curls up. With the hatchling at the center.

_ “What are you doing?” _

_ “Sleep,”  _ she hisses, closing her eyes. 

And sleep she does. 


End file.
